Desperation and suicide stalk refugees on Australia's 'Pacific gulag'

A camp for detained asylum seekers on the Pacific island of Nauru. AFP

Refugee settlement camp number five, a cluster of prefabricated huts poking out of Nauru's sweltering rocky landscape, is a place defined by desperation and rarely visited by outsiders.

Access to the weed-infested camp is severely restricted. The residents are there against their will, the subjects of a controversial deal between this island's government and the Australian authorities, keen to prevent boatpeople setting foot on their shores.

Most are asylum seekers who tried to reach Australia by sea but were detained and processed in compounds run by the Nauru government and paid for by Canberra under its hardline immigration policy.

A swastika spray-painted on a large water tank alongside initials "ABF" make clear the inhabitants' views on the Australian Border Force, which helps oversee them.

Many are willing to speak only on condition of anonymity, but they describe existence on this remote speck of land in the South Pacific as devoid of hope and filled with a desperation that has driven some to attempt suicide.

A Sri Lankan refugee interned on the Pacific island of Nauru. AFP

A refugee from Iran worries about himself, but above all about his children.

His daughter, 12, once doused herself in petrol and threatened to set herself alight after struggling to cope with spending almost half her life on Nauru.

"She took the lighter, she was screaming 'Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I want to kill myself, I want to die'," he said.

He managed to seize the lighter from her hands, but the despair that drove the girl to attempt suicide still hangs over this family of four.

Her 13-year-old brother says in a monotone: "I have no school, I have no future, I have no life."

Somali asylum-seeker Khadar Hrisi watches over his depressed wife, afraid to even sleep because of her repeated suicide attempts, including one just a few days earlier.

He took her to the nearest hospital, which is funded by Australia, but they received little help.

"Last night, they called the police and they kicked us [out of] ... the hospital," he says.

Khadar Hrisi​​​​​, a Somali refugee on Nauru who says his wife has become suicidal. AFP

Refugees say medical services are usually overwhelmed because so many of them suffer from psychological illnesses.

Nauru's 900 detainees, including 100 children, often wait years to find out if they have been accepted as genuine refugees.

Even if they are, Australia still refuses to take them, leaving refugees stranded in the settlement camps, unable to leave the 21 square kilometre island they regard as an open-air prison.

A Refugee Council of Australia report last week claimed many detainees' mental health was buckling because they could see no end to their plight.

"Those who have seen this suffering say it is worse than anything they have seen, including in war zones ... people are broken," the report stated.